Boring Task Research Articles

HPA activity mediates the link between trait impulsivity and boredom

Boredom, a complex emotional state with implications for mental health and well-being, has garnered attention across disciplines, yet remains relatively understudied in psychiatric research. Here, we explored the intricate relationship between trait-impulsivity, stress, and boredom across two studies. Participants completed self-report measures of trait-impulsivity and boredom and boredom-inducing tasks. Study 1, involving 80 participants (42 women and 38 men, aged 20–63), replicates previous findings, by demonstrating that impulsive individuals report greater boredom following a boring task. Study 2 then extends this, using 20 participants (9 women and 12 men, aged 18–24), to show that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, specifically heightened salivary cortisol responses, mediate the link between impulsivity and boredom following a boring task. Collectively, these results demonstrate that HPA axis activity may underline the relationship between trait-impulsivity and boredom by extending previous work and offering a novel insight into potential mechanisms. These findings offer promise for personalised interventions, designed for high impulsivity individuals, to alleviate the negative impacts of boredom and potentially break the identified feedback loop.

"Stay focused!": The role of inner speech in maintaining attention during a boring task.

Is inner speech involved in sustaining attention, and is this reflected in response times for stimulus detection? In Experiment 1, we measured response times to an infrequently occurring stimulus (a black dot appearing at 1-3 min intervals) and subsequently asked participants to report on the character of their inner experience at the time the stimulus appeared. Our main preregistered hypothesis was that there would be an interaction between inner speech and task relevance of thought with reaction times being the fastest on prompts preceded by task-relevant inner speech. This would indicate that participants could use their inner voice to maintain performance on the task. With generalized linear mixed-effects models fitted to a gamma distribution, we found significant effects of task relevance but no interaction with inner speech. However, using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis method, we found that trials preceded by task-relevant inner speech additionally displayed lower standard deviation and lower mode (independently of the main effect of task relevance), suggestive of increased processing efficiency. Due to deviations from the preregistered sampling and analysis procedures, we replicated our findings in Experiment 2. Our results add support to the hypothesis that inner speech serves a functional role in top-down attentional control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Music Genre Classification Using Random Forest Model

Music genre is a grouping of music based on their style. To group music into certain genres is a long and boring task to do manually because one must listen to each song individually and determine which genre does this song belong to. This process can be made automatic using classification models like Random Forest. The Random Forest model is a mutated version of the decision tree model, where Random Forest uses multiple decision trees to get a single result. In this paper the model that will be tested is the Random Forest model and XGB Classification model for comparison. The XGB Classification model is used to compare because it is similar to the Random Forest model. XGB Classification is a mutated decision tree model which uses CART as its tree. The results show that with the Random Forest model, an accuracy of 72% is achieved when all audio features are included, and with the XGB Classification, an accuracy of 73% is achieved with some audio features dropped.

Supplemental Material for “Stay Focused!”: The Role of Inner Speech in Maintaining Attention During a Boring Task

Supplemental Material for “Stay Focused!”: The Role of Inner Speech in Maintaining Attention During a Boring Task

Justifying the bored self: On projective, domestic, and civic boredom in Danish retail banking

In the wake of the financial crisis, Danish retail bankers have experienced a marked increase in mundane administrative tasks, which do not conform to what they expect their work lives to be. Seeking to understand how the bankers cope with this, the paper conducts a qualitative inquiry into the identity work of Danish retail bankers, focusing on the ways in which they reconcile experiences of boredom with their work-identity. Drawing on pragmatic sociology, this reconciliation is conceptualized as individual justifications of boredom through different orders of worth. The paper identifies three justifications of boredom: (1) Projective boredom posits boring administrative tasks as unwanted and problematic. This justification is generally in line with currently dominant empirical and theoretical accounts of the financial sector and finds no justification for boredom, seeking, instead, to eliminate it. (2) Domestic boredom justifies the boring tasks as a duty performed by the humble and respectable banker, who is concerned with their status in the local community and whose sense of pride has been damaged by the many scandals in the sector. Finally, (3) civic boredom justifies boredom as a sacrifice made by the selfless banker who acts in the interest of the common good, understood as a more responsible, and less greedy, financial sector. Here, the meaninglessness of specific tasks is transcended in the service of a higher purpose, which helps the individual sustain an identity as a solidary professional.

Bored and better: Interpersonal boredom results in people feeling not only superior to the boring individual, but also to others

ABSTRACT Four experiments tested the hypothesis that meeting someone new who is boring would result in people feeling superior to the boring individual, which would then result in people viewing themselves as better than others and increased confidence. Respondents reported greater feelings of superiority, meaninglessness, and difficulty paying attention when they wrote about meeting a new, boring individual than a new or manipulative individual. Feeling superior, but not meaninglessness and attention, mediated the effect of interpersonal boredom on viewing oneself as better than others, but not on confidence. These finding did not occur when people wrote about a boring task or a disliked, manipulative individual. The experiments elucidate how interpersonal boredom, albeit a negative experience, can enhance people’s sense of self.

JISWorkshop on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Research: Views from RPA Industry Leaders and AIS Researchers

<i>JIS</i>Workshop on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Research: Views from RPA Industry Leaders and AIS Researchers

Experienced entropy drives choice behavior in a boring decision-making task

Boredom has been defined as an aversive mental state that is induced by the disability to engage in satisfying activity, most often experienced in monotonous environments. However, current understanding of the situational factors inducing boredom and driving subsequent behavior remains incomplete. Here, we introduce a two-alternative forced-choice task coupled with sensory stimulation of different degrees of monotony. We find that human subjects develop a bias in decision-making, avoiding the more monotonous alternative that is correlated with self-reported state boredom. This finding was replicated in independent laboratory and online experiments and proved to be specific for the induction of boredom rather than curiosity. Furthermore, using theoretical modeling we show that the entropy in the sequence of individually experienced stimuli, a measure of information gain, serves as a major determinant to predict choice behavior in the task. With this, we underline the relevance of boredom for driving behavioral responses that ensure a lasting stream of information to the brain.

Boredom coping in the context of secondary education

The article concerns the problematics of the boredom experience and especially boredom coping in Czech secondary school students (n = 460). The relationships between, on the one hand, reported boredom frequency, various aspects of state boredom experienced at school, trait boredom, grade point average and learning motivational characteristics and, on the other hand, different types of boredom coping strategies have been examined. Data were obtained using the Boredom Proneness Scale, Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, Coping with Boredom Scale, Learning Motivation Inventory and closed questions. Descriptive and inductive statistics were used to process the data. More and less risky boredom coping strategies were identified with regard to the boredom experience at school and grade point average. A key factor facilitating adaptive boredom coping appears to be the capability to find personal value in potentially boring tasks and to exert cognitive effort together with high levels of positive achievement motivation and conscientiousness with regard to schoolwork. Additionally, at least a certain level of cognitive motivation, which seems to be a key supportive factor, is needed. A risk factor with regard to rather maladaptive boredom coping appears to be the tendency to systematically employ avoidance or even escaping behavior. The results indicate that school boredom coping issues are very complicated and have numerous implications for further research.

Gamification as an innovative instrument for employee engagement

Society 5.0, industry 4.0, globalization, digitalization, and even pandemic have changed the whole labor market. Thus, the market expands, and the need for employees is very high. Nowadays, employers face with huge lack of qualified and even unqualified workforce. On the contrary, employees are unwilling to change their workplace, return to normal contract work, or even start work. They become less engaged in all organizational processes and performance. Organizations are forced to think about employee attraction, retention, and engagement by applying various modern instruments and methods. Employee engagement is a trending topic among human resource managers because it directly correlates with organizational performance, customer satisfaction, and even its financial results. It helps to retain employees, explode their competencies, and improve organizational results. In this paper, employee engagement could be defined as individual, job, and organization engagement. Gamification is a powerful tool that increases employee engagement because it allows transforming boring and routine tasks into interesting and meaningful activities and engaging employees. Gamification motivates employees, providing the mean or satisfying internal or external needs. Regular engagement methods already could not achieve key purpose indicators, so gamification could be one of the new ways of work. Although organizations are highly interested in gamification application possibilities, there is a relative lack of research concerning gamification in employee engagement growth. This paper aims to identify how gamification affects employee engagement – individual, job, and organizational. The quantitative empirical research evaluated the theoretically grounded framework of gamification and employee engagement. The results showed that gamification has the strongest impact on individual and job engagement. In the process of assessing the engagement factors and gamification relationship, gamification makes the most substantial impact on reward and recognition, procedural justice, feedback, distributive justice, perceived supervisor support, career, knowledge, learning, and development opportunities.

Evidence for a Behaviourally Measurable Perseverance Trait in Humans.

The aim was to create and study a possible behavioural measure for trait(s) in humans that reflect the ability and motivation to continue an unpleasant behaviour, i.e., behavioural perseverance or persistence (BP). We utilised six different tasks with 54 subjects to measure the possible BP trait(s): cold pressor task, hand grip endurance task, impossible anagram task, impossible verbal reasoning task, thread and needle task, and boring video task. The task performances formed two BP factors. Together, the two-factor solution is responsible for the common variance constituting 37.3% of the total variance in the performances i.e., performance times. Excluding the impossible anagram task, the performance in any given task was better explained by performances in the other tasks (i.e., “trait”, η2 range = 0.131–0.253) than by the rank order variable (“depletion”, i.e., getting tired from the previous tasks, η2 range = 0–0.096).

Multimedia augmented reality game for learning math.

The traditional method for learning the multiplication tables is a repetitive and boring task. Teachers try to find new methods to motivate children in this tedious duty, and one of the lines to consider is to integrate en- tertainment into educational processes. This work presents a new multimedia interaction approach in order to allow children to practice these math opera- tions and have fun. The learning process has been gamified by means of two mini-games designed for mobile platforms, based on meromictic or repetitive learning. The genre of these mini-games have been selected according to chil- dren preferences: one turn-based fighting and other throwing-objects game. A series of proposed multiplications have to be solved during the play to per- form the player actions. Moreover, in order to support learning engagement, both have been visualized through Augmented Reality, combining real and virtual reality. This paper discusses the good results of mixing entertainment with some learning tasks, due to the engagement of the children to the mobile based games. A pilot study has been performed in order to evaluate the learn- ing effectiveness and usability of the proposal. Results support that playing the video games makes this tedious multiplication practice more enjoyable and attractive for children so they improve their math skills.

Chemical Battleship: Discovering and Learning the Periodic Table Playing a Didactic and Strategic Board Game

The periodic table is an essential topic in the teaching and learning of science at all education levels, as it contains information about the main physical and chemical properties of the different elements constituting the matter. However, becoming familiar with the facts behind the periodic table such as the element names and/or symbols, their metallic character, their electronegativity, and so on, may seem a tedious and boring task, depending on the approach the teacher uses. One way to stimulate students is through so-called gamification, in which learning occurs as an “almost undetected” consequence of playing a game. Of course, the game must be designed and prepared in such a way that the game and learning come together. In this work, we present Chemical Battleship, a chemical version of the classic board game Battleship, to learn the main topics contained in the periodic table and identify the common glassware of the lab. Additionally, using this game facilitates presenting the chemistry from a fun approach to certain educational levels. The periodic table itself is used to deploy the “fleet”, which is actually just labware. The “shots” must be “fired” by identifying the chemical element the player wants to fire at, and they must do so by using different properties of the element. Repeating this process, students get soon familiar with the periodic table and the information it contains, as well as with the lab glassware. Chemical Battleship was tested with elementary school students and third-year students in a Primary Education Teacher Degree program. Use of this game had a high acceptance from both groups, awakening students’ interest and curiosity in the first group and improving knowledge in the latter group. Students enhanced not only their subjective perception of their knowledge but also what they really know about the periodic table, as reflected in the improvement of their marks.

A new concept of full-automated equipment for the manufacture of shirt collars and cuffs

• Clothes production is usually a labour-intensive task. • Automation has been increasingly applied in some clothes production operations. • A full-automatic equipment has been developed, allowing collars and cuffs production. • Equipment allows automatic cutting and sewing operations in shirt components. • The different equipment components have been structurally optimized, becoming the equipment more sustainable. • Equipment avoids the use of labour in repetitive and boring tasks with low added-value. The quality requirements in clothing manufacturing have been increasing and consumer pressure on prices has also grown steadily. In fact, the textile industry is continuously seeking for countries practicing low salaries, because this kind of industry is usually based on labour-intensive tasks, to the detriment of task automation. Thus, clothing manufacturers need to be creative in order to improve the manufacturing processes, trying to automate the needed operations to produce each cloth component as much as possible. Automated operations avoid manufacturing mistakes and increase productivity, which are the main concerns of the clothing market. This work intends to develop a new concept of equipment able to produce collars and cuffs for shirts almost fully automatically. The manual movements have been carefully observed, optimized and replicated by the equipment, which successfully sews and cuts collars and cuffs for shirt fabrication. The structure and main systems used in the equipment were studied using the Finite Element Method (FEM), ensuring the required accuracy for all related operations. The result is a functional equipment that is able to be produced in large scale with an affordable cost, overcoming several problems related to the labour usually associated with the sewing and cutting operations required to fabricate collars and cuffs.

A deep convolution generative adversarial networks based fuzzing framework for industry control protocols

A growing awareness is brought that the safety and security of industrial control systems cannot be dealt with in isolation, and the safety and security of industrial control protocols (ICPs) should be considered jointly. Fuzz testing (fuzzing) for the ICP is a common way to discover whether the ICP itself is designed and implemented with flaws and network security vulnerability. Traditional fuzzing methods promote the safety and security testing of ICPs, and many of them have practical applications. However, most traditional fuzzing methods rely heavily on the specification of ICPs, which makes the test process a costly, time-consuming, troublesome and boring task. And the task is hard to repeat if the specification does not exist. In this study, we propose a smart and automated protocol fuzzing methodology based on improved deep convolution generative adversarial network and give a series of performance metrics. An automated and intelligent fuzzing framework BLSTM-DCNNFuzz for application is designed. Several typical ICPs, including Modbus and EtherCAT, are applied to test the effectiveness and efficiency of our framework. Experiment results show that our methodology outperforms the existing ones like General Purpose Fuzzer and other deep learning based fuzzing methods in convenience, effectiveness, and efficiency.

Promoting extensive reading in a blended learning modality: Students’ perceptions

Reading in foreign language is a difficult ability to foster and a boring task for some students. That is why teachers should look for attractive ways to promote it. The objective of this research is to characterize students’ perceptions towards the use of a blended learning modality to promote extensive reading, as well as to know if they consider having meaningful reading comprehension when working with it at the Bachelor of Teaching English at the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla. To analyze this phenomenon, a cross-sectional quantitative study was accomplished with a Likert-scale questionnaire and the TOEFL examination test as instruments. The results characterize the subjects’ perceptions as identifying the blended learning modality like a suitable learning resource to promote extensive reading as well as another technology-based instructional delivery environment with special attributes that empower meaning reading-learning experiences since their tutor was available inside and outside the classroom to help them in their extensive reading process. Besides, they did extensive reading in shorter periods for specific purposes like pleasure, information, and general understanding. Finally, they found that working in this modality promotes cognitive processing if the tasks are pedagogically designed.

Over and over again: Changes in frontal EEG asymmetry across a boring task.

Boredom is an aversive emotional state. People high in trait boredom are less able to effectively cope with and resolve boredom than people low in trait boredom. Trait boredom is characterized by proneness and susceptibility, which are associated with avoidance and approach behavioral dispositions, respectively. Baseline frontal EEG asymmetry (FEA) has been treated as a trait level neural correlate of approach and avoidance motivational styles. Online processes by which people effectively cope with and resolve state boredom may involve an approach motivation to create stimulation. Evidence indicates that FEA reflects an active approach or avoidance motivation. This study tested the prediction that proneness and susceptibility would be related to relative less and greater left frontal activity during baseline, respectively, and lower levels of trait boredom would be associated with a leftward shift frontal activity as situationally induced boredom ensued. Young adults (N=54) completed trait boredom scales, baseline EEG, and a boring task. Results showed that people low in trait boredom exhibited a leftward shift in frontal activity over the course of the boring task. No relations between trait boredom and baseline FEA were observed. The results are consistent with the possibility that approach motivation is involved in coping with and resolving boredom. FEA has been characterized at trait and state levels. Our results provide a new view of FEA as a signature of dynamic online emotion regulatory processes. The implications from linking boredom and FEA for understanding the mechanisms of boredom resolution and meaning of FEA are discussed.

Bored like Hell: Religiosity reduces boredom and tempers the quest for meaning.

Boredom involves a lack meaning. Conversely, religiosity offers people a sense of meaning. Accordingly, we proposed that by imbuing a sense of meaningfulness, religiosity leads people to experience less boredom. Furthermore, we hypothesized and tested that by reducing boredom, religiosity indirectly inhibits the search for meaningful engagement. In Study 1, following boring tasks, religious people experienced lower levels of boredom and were less motivated to search for meaning than nonreligious people. We found in Study 2 that religious (vs. non- or less religious) people reported higher perceived meaning in life, which was associated with a reduced tendency to feel bored, and with a reduced need to search for meaning in life. Study 3 confirmed that the meaning in life associated with religiosity was associated with reduced state boredom. Religious participants were again less inclined to search for meaning, which was explained by the relatively low levels of boredom that religious (vs. nonreligious) participants experienced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Lost in Thought: The Blurring of Life and Art in the Visual Realism and Superrealism of Gustave Courbet, Duane Hanson, and Karl Ove Knausgaard

Abstract The blurring of life and art is at the center of Karl Ove Knausgaard's explorations in his memoir, My Struggle, Book 1. Like life, Knausgaard's book is filled with boring tasks, objects, and events, through which he sifts attempting to locate intrinsic significance. Rendering in hyperreal detail aestheticizing mundane domestic moments positions him as the literary inheritor of the visual art movements of realism and superrealism, alongside artists Gustave Courbet and Duane Hanson. Superrealist art nudges us into examination of life and peers over the edge for a glimpse of what lies beyond the nothingness of the mundane.

MSANet: multimodal self-augmentation and adversarial network for RGB-D object recognition

This paper researches on the problem of object recognition using RGB-D data. Although deep convolutional neural networks have so far made progress in this area, they are still suffering a lot from lack of large-scale manually labeled RGB-D data. Labeling large-scale RGB-D dataset is a time-consuming and boring task. More importantly, such large-scale datasets often exist a long tail, and those hard positive examples of the tail can hardly be recognized. To solve these problems, we propose a multimodal self-augmentation and adversarial network (MSANet) for RGB-D object recognition, which can augment the data effectively at two levels while keeping the annotations. Toward the first level, series of transformations are leveraged to generate class-agnostic examples for each instance, which supports the training of our MSANet. Toward the second level, an adversarial network is proposed to generate class-specific hard positive examples while learning to classify them correctly to further improve the performance of our MSANet. Via the above schemes, the proposed approach wins the best results on several available RGB-D object recognition datasets, e.g., our experimental results indicate a 1.5% accuracy boost on benchmark Washington RGB-D object dataset compared with the current state of the art.